HTC's People app on the Salsa is its take on the Android contacts system, where you manage a combined list of existing SIM contacts and any HTC imports from elsewhere. Your friends can be grouped together for easy access, with users able to create their own custom groups and add anyone into the list.

Social network support is of course included, with the Salsa able to pull in and display details from Twitter, Facebook, your SIM card and any previous details you've added via your Google account.

Thankfully you can choose which ones to display via the Menu, making things easy to manage if you've somehow become popular on the internet.

The HTC Salsa's Home screen People widget is an excellent way to fill up one of your screens, offering quick access to your favourite contacts via a scrollable, visual list that populates itself with any photos you've linked with accounts. You can set a default action for each of these, too, automatically opening up a SMS message for one person or calling another.

Contacts can be linked if you have duplicate entries on your phone and imported from social networks, plus HTC lets you set a different ringtone for each contact or simply block all calls from that person if they're going over the top with the personal contact.

Call quality is excellent, with voices coming through nice and clear. The speaker volume isn't particularly loud, though. We had to keep it at maximum to make things properly audible, so if you work somewhere noisy or have broken your ears through years of listening to drum & bass too loudly, you may find the Salsa's not quite loud enough.

HTC has also put a proximity sensor in the Salsa's case, allowing the screen to automatically turn itself off when you put it to your ear. This seems like magic – and to 15th Century peasants, it is.

Signal reception on th HTC Salsa was good. We were worried that the metal case might interfere with mobile reception, but didn't have any issues at all.

In fact, we had the full four-bar signal more often than not, which is better than most phones manage – and seemed to translate into decent call quality, rather than just pretending to have signal when there really was none.

With the HTC Salsa, you can stay connected with the people that are most important to you. The new Facebook widget lets you select the friends and family whose updates really matter, so you can always see them right on your home screen. Stay close even when you're apart.

One touch to Facebook

One touch to share what you're up to. HTC Salsa has a Facebook button that lets you share just about anything with just one touch. Take a photo - straight to Facebook. Make a video - straight to Facebook. Show whatever, whenever, at the touch of a button.